It looks like RtfEdit is no longer an option for people seeking a lightweight RTF editor for Linux.

The links in the OP's post no longer work, and all references to RtfEdit seem to have been deleted from his genscriber.com web site. RtfEdit was just something the author wrote for his own use, and as he says in this thread, he was taken aback by the amount of interest in it. My guess is that he probably decided that he didn't want to take on the responsibilities of supporting it for a large number of users.

It continues to boggle my mind that with all the programming talent in the Linux world, nobody has managed to do for Linux what the Jarte team has done for Windows.

I downloaded the latest ZIP files for RftEdit 1.4.3 and spent a couple of hours testdriving both the "pretty" and "plain X11" versions. I found no problems until I started testing compatibility with other wordprocessors, specifically Abiword, which most Puppies include as their standard wordprocessor, and SoftMaker FreeOffice's TextMaker.

I did my tests on a frugal install of Precise 5.4.93, using the standard Abiword 2.8.6, along with RftEdit 1.4.3 (both the "pretty" and "plain" versions) and the latest version of TextMaker for Linux (rev 696).

Some very odd things seem to happen to fonts when you pass a document from Abiword or TextMaker to RtfEdit.

In TextMaker, I created a new document consisting of a single sentence, with the font set to DejaVu Sans 10. The line of text was just under 4 inches long.
(All length measurements I cite are based on the ruler bars of the respective applications.)

I saved this as an RTF file named "test2.rtf"

I reopened the file in TextMaker, just to make sure it was saved looking the way I thought it should look. All good.

I then looked at the file in Abiword (2.8.6). It looked essentially the same as in TextMaker, a single line of text about 3 3/4 inches long.

I then started RtfEdit, which came up with a blank document (as expected) and with the font set to sans-serif 12.

Using File->Open I opened the "test2.rtf" document. When it appeared, the font setting in RtfEdit had changed to serif 10. The line of text was displayed in a tiny SERIF font, such that the whole line was just under 2 inches long. Very strange.

Using CTRL-A, I selected the entire (one-line) text, and then selected DejaVu Sans 10 using the Font tool. Now the text was displayed in a tiny sans-serif font, such that the whole line was about 2 1/3 inches long.

I saved this as "test3.rtf", exited RtfEdit, then restarted RtfEdit and reopened the document. It looked the same, still in a tiny sans-serif font about 2 1/3 inches long.

I then opened "test3.rtf" in TextMaker, where it looked very similar, but slightly longer at about 2.5 inches long, in a tiny sans-serif font. TextMaker's font tool claimed that that the text was in DejaVu Sans 10, but the text was clearly smaller than it appeared in "test2.rtf", which was created in TextMaker with the font set to DejaVu Sans 10.

I then opened "test3.rtf" in Abiword. The results were much the same as with TextMaker -- a line of text a bit over 2.5 inches long, which Abiword's font tool said was in DejaVu Sans 10, but which is clearly in type smaller than what you get when you create a new Abiword document in DejaVu Sans 10.

Finally, I repeated the whole test, the only difference being that this time I used Abiword to create the original "test2.rtf" file. Same results.

What about the other direction? Interestingly, a DejaVu San 10 document created in RftEdit looked exactly the same in TextMaker and Abiword, as it did in RtfEdit. So no problems going in that direction.

Table funkiness

I had on hand some RTF documents that included simple tables. These documents were created using Jarte on Windows XP. (Jarte is a sort of souped-up Wordpad and is built on top of the same engine that Wordpad uses.) TextMaker handles them just fine, and I have sometimes passed these docs between Jarte and TextMaker for Windows, making changes from both ends, without any problems. Although I admit I have not done this extensively.

Abiword also handles these documents just fine, at least to display them. (I have never trusted Abiword enough to use it to edit an existing document.)

The borders on the tables are simple thin lines around each cell. When I opened one of these documents in RtfEdit, I found that the border lines were missing, or least not visible.

Going the other way is again, no problem. Tables constructed in RtfEdit display just fine in both TextMaker and Abiword.

This report and my test RTF test files are included in the attached ZIP file.

Well, I did ask. Thanks for the info. I have uploaded 1.4.4 with a fix for the tinytext. I can't do anything about jarte at this time.

6502coder wrote:

When it appeared, the font setting in RtfEdit had changed to serif 10. The line of text was displayed in a tiny SERIF font, such that the whole line was just under 2 inches long.

Abiword on my system could not display it at all. It was just a black bar.

In rtfed you were actually looking at serif 10, but as superscript. This happens because textmaker uses the "\up0" tag instead of "\nosupersub".
I have added a fix to overcome this problem.

Quote:

I then opened "test3.rtf" in TextMaker, where it looked very similar, but slightly longer at about 2.5 inches long, in a tiny sans-serif font. TextMaker's font tool claimed that that the text was in DejaVu Sans 10, but the text was clearly smaller than it appeared in "test2.rtf", which was created in TextMaker with the font set to DejaVu Sans 10.

Because it was saved as superscript.

Quote:

I then opened "test3.rtf" in Abiword. The results were much the same as with TextMaker -- a line of text a bit over 2.5 inches long, which Abiword's font tool said was in DejaVu Sans 10, but which is clearly in type smaller than what you get when you create a new Abiword document in DejaVu Sans 10.

Still in superscript.

Quote:

Finally, I repeated the whole test, the only difference being that this time I used Abiword to create the original "test2.rtf" file. Same results.

No problems between abiword and rtfed on my system.

Quote:

The borders on the tables are simple thin lines around each cell. When I opened one of these documents in RtfEdit, I found that the border lines were missing, or least not visible.

The rtf file you supplied in the download was not a standard rtf. On my system, Abiword did not display the tables correctly.
rtfed did try display the tables but there was no style settings, so the table had an invisible grid with zero width.

There a couple of other things I am aware of, but they have always been there. Images do not always transport well, and hyperlinks are disabled.

Thanks for the response to my test report. It never occurred to me to suspect superscripting, but that makes perfect sense.

"It was just a black bar." Oh yeah, I did get that too in Abiword. I had to fiddle with the text highlighting setting to get the text to show up. I should have mentioned that in my report but I forgot.

Odd about the tables not showing up in your Abiword. They definitely do look okay in Abiword on my system. Oh well, just one of those mysteries I suppose.

It's interesting that you say that the RTF file with the table was not a standard RTF. This file was created in Jarte, and since Jarte is built on the MS Wordpad engine I have always assumed that Jarte files would have a very high degree of compliance with the RTF standard. But your explanation for the missing borders makes sense and I have no doubt you are right.

@webmayo
It's interesting that you say that the RTF file with the table was not a standard RTF. This file was created in Jarte, and since Jarte is built on the MS Wordpad engine I have always assumed that Jarte files would have a very high degree of compliance with the RTF standard.

I would imagine Jarte does produce standard rtf. I really don't know I have never used it. I was referring to the actual file you uploaded.
When I tried to open it in an editor to view the source, both gedit and pluma refused to open it because it contained binary data, which is not standard.
After taking a closer look with a binary editor, I found it was just a null at the end of the file. I removed it and was then able to open it in gedit.
I quickly found the cause of the missing table borders. I can fix this. I will upload the new version in a few days.

Did some further testing with the new 1.4.4
Test report and files are in the ZIP

Yes, I can confirm the errors in the report. Somewhere along the way I must have introduced the bug. Strange thing is, this is the version I have used myself, and the only difference is I compiled it with later libraries.

While I was testing for the bug you reported I found other problems with tables. I will attempt to fix them before I upload the new version.

I think that anyone using rtfedit should realise it is an incomplete project. I have used it for a few years, and it does the job I intended it for. As I said in a previous post, One day I may finish it.

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